


Before the world ends and all roles are forsaken

by laughingpineapple



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: M/M, Poison, journeying together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-23 02:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17674997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: Rain on the ramparts;castle walls drowned in the Veldt.The acacia tree weeps.





	Before the world ends and all roles are forsaken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lirillith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirillith/gifts).



The end is past, present, ever rumbling on the horizon. It pulses through the land, flowing underground, shot through the earth's veins and gushing out in the distance to fill the air in a feverish haze. There is no escaping this end. It is now, in every breath.  _ It happened ten years ago _ , says a low, pained voice from a distant star,  _ and never again _ . The voice is wrong. It will happen again. Doma fell. Others will fall. Over and over until the earth itself will choke, convulsing as poison burns under its skin. No escape. Not even in the Veldt. It ends now and forever. 

For a glorious moment, the endless plains’ promises come back to Cyan and he can believe in a free land of convergences and possibilities, where he could leave his pain behind, lost among the grass. Too bad. It ends. The poison runs deep, it grabs him with tendrils that bring him down until it's only a vague, unfocused sense of honor that keeps him from screaming. The assault relents and he remains empty, robbed of past and future.

“I stand on Doma's bastion as the water turneth black…”

 

“We’re not that lost, man. Come on. Come back to me.”

There’s a wall of water outside their tent. It's not the end of the world but it looks like it, now that the heavens have opened above the Veldt and all the world's rain is pouring down. A burst of lightning strikes the acacia tree on a nearby plateau. Sabin watches it burst into flames, sends a quick prayer its way, all trees still sacred to the man who still dreams of the desert. If it saved them from that lightning, he is thankful, too.

Under their tent, he tucks the feverish Cyan under their blankets and capes. He sits cross-legged beside his companion, tense, vigil, standing guard so that poison won't take another victim, not under his watch, not ever. He already failed in letting that wolf slip past his guard - now, out of medicines until they find fabled Mobliz to the East, all he can do for his companion is to give him a safe, warm place to rest. And a voice to guide him home. 

 

There is an intimacy to this moment, as they both struggle to leave their ghosts behind them and make it to the dawn. Sabin is here to clasp Cyan's hand and hold onto him. Cyan can't listen, but Sabin tells him that he doesn't have to be noble now - or ever again, it takes a while to shift gears but one can get the hang of it. 

Well, Cyan wouldn't listen anyway. He is going to hold onto his traditions and keep marching on, spouting something trite and old-fashioned about the value of hard work and believing every syllable of it. Brushing cold sweat away from the man's forehead, letting his hand linger in a caress, Sabin considers this brand of loyalty and for once, just for tonight, he finds it comforting. He can be enough of a rebel for the two of them. When the worst is over and Cyan curls up against him, he curls back, like a big, unwieldy cat, and ends up resting his head on his companion’s chest, their breaths synchronized in a trained rhythm of four-in, hold seven, eight-out. Once Sabin is sure the other man's sleeping it all off, he'll move to the tent's entrance and mount guard. Maybe a little later than that. Just one more moment.

  
  


“Hey, sorry for yesterday,” Sabin says out of the blue as the rain has calmed down to a soft pitter-patter and they are sluggishly going through the motions of folding their tent and getting ready to move. Sorry for the damn wolf, he means, sorry for the lousy tent, sorry for running out of antidotes, mostly sorry for his stomach being a stupid mix of elated and guilty he hasn't had to keep bottled in a long time. That sounds like something one might need to apologize for, especially to someone who cares for honor, as an act of respect, but then Cyan is going to say something in return and muscle-brain Sabin tells himself he’s too big and dumb to sort out what he would like this answer to be, let alone what to do if it isn’t what he would have liked. Oh well. It’s out in the open now and all he can do is to let it flow.

“It mattereth little, in the end,” says Cyan whose head is still at once empty and full of omens, knowing he has been cheated out of death this time, with only a stark pallor and heavy bags under his eyes to show for his struggles, but that dark clouds still gather.

“Ah. That sounds right. Guess a soft heart falls easy. We can leave when you are ready! Maybe we'll find Mobliz today!”

Cyan turns to stare at him, snapped out of his sickly omens. The previous night was not all poison, was it. But there's a void inside him that's as big as a castle and all the ghosts have left (on a train, and they, at least, are at peace). Sabin's words seep in like a droplet, that is to say, they do leave an echo, but can't do much to fill this empty castle's halls. Cyan cannot understand them now. 

“Well, then. The helping hand we need is at the end of our own arm,” he says instead, which is indeed somewhat trite and old-fashioned and in praise of hard work and makes Sabin laugh under his breath. “Or the foot at our own leg, I should say, as Mobliz shall not find us itself, so, Sir Sabin, thou shall lead the way!”

 

Cyan cannot follow anybody's heart, least of all his own. What he can follow, for now, is this distant star he’s met in his darkest hour, bright and stubborn, rash and loyal, and allow himself, maybe, to bask in that light for as long as the cruel fates won't play their part again.

 

He cannot understand these words now, but they stay with him. They dig and burrow and pool down for a while, resting, until the end of the world and beyond, until...

 


End file.
